


like clockwork

by frozennightmare



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Doomsday Fix, F/M, Fluff, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozennightmare/pseuds/frozennightmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Breakfast at Mickey’s was good, and he took care of her better than anyone she could have asked for, (aside from the man next to her, but half the time it was her taking care of him), but this was were she belonged, this was more than a ship or a family, this was home.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> plot bunny i don't even know  
> if you are going to ask were the title came from, the answer is quite simply i don't have a clue. it popped into my head and it felt like it fit.  
> look i replaced the original summary with one that doesn't suck  
> ok,nvm,summary take three  
> you know when i named this fic i probably should have written in a passage that made the title make sense

1.

“We’ve got cyberlegion movement through Edinburgh and all the way to Aberdeen.” Jake’s got a big red marker in his hand, one of the smelly ones Rose used to mark her papers up with as a kid, making circles and arrows across his map like they’re in a war room. Mickey leans over and sits a fallen chess piece back upright over Edinburgh, knocking over three others with the move and sending the red-string mobiles flying. The entire kitchen of Mickey’s flat has become a war room, Jake having plastered the walls with newspaper and maps, connecting everything with a yarn laser maze. “Stragglers, mostly; the battalion should hold them.”

“What about the encampment at Leeds?” Pete’s voice goes tinny through the speaker of Rose’s phone on the table.

“Tom’s got it covered, I talked to him an hour ago.” Rose has been in his flat maybe five minutes, he didn’t even see her come in, but it’s hard not to really look at her now. She’s wearing even more makeup than usual in an attempt to cover up the dark bags under her eyes, fingers resting languidly on the table, staring at that mythical something that is usually reserved for college students after an all-nighter.

Jake exchanges a glance with Mickey, having looked up from his maps just long enough to notice the tiny, pained expression she makes, but he shakes his head just enough so he won’t say anything.

“That seems to be everything,” sighs Pete. “Rose, I’ll tell Jackie to leave the lights on, see you in a few hours.”

“Actually, she’s staying at my flat tonight.” Mickey cuts across. He slams his thumb over the microphone as Rose shakes her head at him so Pete can’t hear their whispered argument.

“I can drive home, Mickey, what’s the matter?”

“It’s midnight, and that’s three hours from here.”

“So?”

“How much sleep have you gotten this week, be honest.”

She bites down on her lower lip. “Ten hours. Maybe.”

“Crash on the couch if it bothers you that much, I don’t care. But I’m not gonna let you drive when you can hardly stay awake.”

He uncovers the microphone and Rose leans over to reassure Pete that she’ll be home tomorrow afternoon and everything will be just fine while Jake throws his associated paper pile into his bag and leaves. She looks up at him the instant her not-quite-father has hung up, hair dangling limply over her face, something already curdling its way to her lips.

“No.” Mickey cuts her off before she can speak. “Couch is that way. I don’t want you awake before ten.”

He wonders why she’s so damn _resistant_ to his attempts to help her.

Rose finds the couch surrounded by paper piled like snowdrifts (Mickey’s organizational habits are atrocious) and wades through until she literally falls over on to the lumpy old thing, dragging one of his flannel blankets over her. Her mind doesn’t want to stop, but her body finally shuts down and says _sleep._

At six am she’s in the bathroom, puking her guts out into his toilet, pretending the carpet beneath her knees isn’t as ratty as it actually is. She can hear Mickey’s footsteps in the hallway, pausing just outside the door, knuckles rapping against the wood. “Rose?”

“Go away.” she mutters, wiping her face on her hand. “I’m fine.”

Her guts heave again, and Mickey slips in uninvited, perching beside her and holding her hair back until she’s done. It’s grown long and ragged since Torchwood, and he realizes how simply rough Rose has become in the last four months, rough and distant and sad. No one sees much of her anymore, not even her mum or almost-dad, she’s got some ambiguous apartment that he’s never been to and she makes it to work every day just fine while Pete makes a request on Jackie’s behalf for her to come home for a few days. And she always nods and says she’ll be there this weekend, that she’s an adult now and doesn’t have to live with her parents.

He doesn’t know if she ever goes home on the weekends like she promises.

She looks so small like this, shaking like a leaf, eyes red-rimmed and wet, leaning back on his arm for support. He wipes a tear off her face and stands up to grab the tissue box as she settles back against the wall, folding her arms across her knees like she’s trying to keep them from going somewhere else.

“I’m fine.” she repeats. “It’s just a stomach bug.”

“Rose Tyler,” he starts, “I have known you since you were six months old. Do not think for half a second that you can throw some bullshit at me without me knowing you’re lying.”

“Three months ago.” she says stiltedly, letting him sit beside her. He thinks he knows what’s going on here, it’s not that hard to play connect-the-dots (dot #1, she was most definitely shagging the Doctor, dot #2, this is not a stomach bug), but Rose will tell him her own way. “Realized I was late after Mum announced she was pregnant. Probably should have figured it out earlier, but I got a bit screwed up in that time machine, lost track of what was when.”

“I remember.” he says, throat tight. “You disappeared. Thought you’d gone back to your flat.”

“I did.” she nods. “Didn’t want it to be true, but-”

Two weeks.

Two weeks since they’d gotten back from Norway.

No wonder she hadn’t slept.

“Did you tell him?”

Rose shakes her head. “He asked. I lied. Mickey, how could I? I-I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t even remotely look four months pregnant, thought I’d lost the baby at first but then it keeps reminding me that it’s there-” she looks like she’s gonna be sick again, but she chokes it down- “-Mum doesn’t know, she can’t know. She can’t worry about me, not right now.”

“You have to tell her eventually.”

“And I will, I don’t like keeping secrets from her. But- what do I even do?” she says, voice cracking into a sob, and Mickey drapes his arm over her shoulder, pulling her against his chest in a hug.

“Here’s what you do.” he tells her. “Go change, take a shower, whatever, but then you’re going back to sleep. You can stress all you want once you’ve had ten hours.”

“Thank you.” she mutters.

“Yeah, whatever. Now, get.” That’s what he’s here for, Mickey the idiot, no, Mickey her best friend, taking care of her when there’s no one else.

At ten forty-five she uncurls herself from the couch like a lazy bear to watch Mickey make tea and he makes a promise to himself to go and grab every single hoodie he owns because she just looks cold and miserable in a tank.

She looks a lot better for her nap though.

Rose spends a lot of nights at Mickey’s flat after that; his couch becomes a conglomeration of fiercely pink blankets and half-read Torchwood files and to be honest it doesn’t look any messier than it did when it was just him. He doesn’t know why she stays; maybe it’s just to have someone around to make her sleep and calm her down when she wakes up from a nightmare and tease her mercilessly when she goes through every carton of ice cream in his house ( _are you sure that’s not a food baby_ , he jokes after the third one, and she curls around her new hint of a baby bump defensively and whispers something about _he didn’t mean it_ ) and to drag her ass to the doctor when she forgets to do it herself. Rose needs a little stability, and so stability he becomes.

“I think I’ll tell her over Christmas.” she announces two months later, packing her bags for the drive up to the Tyler Mansion and the holiday bonanza. “I mean, it’s gonna be hell to explain, but at least I look the part now.”

“Barely.” he laughs. “Besides, all you need to say is ‘alien baby’, I think that kind of covers the weird bases.”

“Pete’s gonna have an aneurysm.”

“Forget your dad, your mother’s gonna have an aneurysm.“ He internally tells the Doctor how lucky he’s going to be to be a whole universe away when the penny drops, wonders if he’ll feel the cosmic slap across the planes. Probably will.

“I’m going to bed.” she announces, flicking off the kitchen lights. “See you at eight, kay?”

“Kay.”

At three Mickey’s woken by a sound he knows all too well, the miraculous, impossible creaking echoing off the walls of his flat. He practically destroys his bedroom door trying to get down to the living room, where Rose has lept off the couch, blanket still draped on her shoulders, sprinting for the hallway.

There’s a blue box sitting there.

That _impossible_ man.

The doors creak open and Rose leaps into the Doctor’s arms with a muffled shriek, confirming that yes, he is solid this time, sobbing into his coat and letting his hands run through her hair. Mickey stays a few feet off, wary, knowing this isn’t his place.

“What universe did you destroy?” he asks, because he certainly remembers Rose telling him the part about _we can’t._

“Not a universe.” he babbles through her hair. “Binary star system, it was...luck, really. Rose, we’ve got to go, the pinhole is only open for about a minute.”

She nods and separates herself from him just long enough to hug Mickey goodbye. “Thanks for taking care of me.” she tells him, and he nods and earns himself a salute from the Doctor.

Just like that, they’re gone.

 ............

The TARDIS has barely dematerialized before when he pins her against the console, making a frantic grab for her jacket zipper, Rose’s tears turning into a brilliant smile. “We really gonna do this in here?” she growls between kisses,  sliding up to sit on the metal.

“Not the first time we’ve shagged on the console.”

Rose’s lips curl upward at the memory, but she grabs onto his wrists suddenly, stopping the rushed stripping. “Wait.”

“Something the matter?” he asks, cupping her face in a hand and darting in to kiss her again, the fiend.

“In a minute. We gotta talk.” She slides off her jacket, down to just her tank top, and this certainly still feels more like stripping than talking. Her hand drops to her belly from his waist on instinct, just a fraction of a movement, but it’s enough to drop his attention there.

The Doctor goes white. “Rose, you said-”

She grabs his hand and presses it to the curve of her belly. “Six months, but I don’t look it. I assume that’s some alien thing, yeah? I’m sorry I lied to you, but I think we both know why I did.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Doctor? Is something wrong?” Her giddy heart goes a bit panicky.

“No,” he says shakily, pulling her towards him in a deeper kiss. “Rose, this is- this is brilliant, I-” He doesn’t seem to be able to communicate properly, which is definitely a first. “Are you sure you want this?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then it’s fantastic.”

There’s a bit more of the whole crazed-stripping thing, and then he practically carries her towards the bedroom (round one, he says, was the reunion shagging, this is the celebratory shagging) and Rose ends up curled up next to him with their hands meeting on her belly.

She hasn’t felt this happy in a long time.

 ..........

In the morning he brings her tea to her before she even has a chance to get up, his hair still ruffled crazily, looking almost naked in just a button-up and jeans.

“I missed you.” he says simply, and she pulls the covers around so he can sit down next to her.

“I know. Doctor, when you were- on the beach, there was something you were gonna say, and then transmission cut out. That sentence, how were you gonna end it?”

“Do I need to say it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you do.” She sets down her tea and curls her fingers around his on the duvet. He smiles at her, leans over to pull her head close and kiss her forehead, whispering the words into her skin so they leak into the smile on her face. “ _I love you.”_

 ...........

“Is it just me, or has it gotten bigger in here?” The TARDIS interior as Rose remembers it was tight and very-spaceshippy. She recalls being able to stretch out her arms and touch both walls, the dark metal reacting with ripples of strange, circular language at her touch. Now the halls soar massively above her head with the archways of an old church, false sunlight skittering off the sandstone walls through the glass windows at the very top.

“She’s been redecorating, yeah.” The Doctor kicks at the sandy floor. “Hasn’t touched the console, but it’s almost like every room I walk into looks different.”

“Why?”

“The TARDIS was mourning.” he says simply. “She missed you as much as I did. She misses everyone that leaves.”

Rose wraps her fingers around his wrist. “Chin up, grumpy gills. Which way were we going again?”

“Oh- uh-” He spins around wildly, counting doors in the hall. “Dear!”

The TARDIS hums in Rose’s head, a breathy, laughing sound, and the third door on the left creaks open. He rolls his eyes at the ceiling with a muttered thanks, Rose laughing unabashedly.

“I should feel jealous.” she snorts.

“Oh, get in here.”

Rose settles on the table in the medbay as he tosses through drawers, gadgets worthy of Ariel’s collections piling up on every available surface. “What do these do?” she asks, playing with a switch on the nearest one.

“Oh, stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.”

“Ok,then.  What are you looking for?”

“A book. Well, a datafile. Not everything in the universe is in this head, you know! The problem with you, Rose, is that hybrids are tricky. Nothing’s ever the same the next time around, and on Gallifrey- well, they were stodgy and tended to keep it in their pants when it came to other species. It only happened a handful of times, and it was renegades, people like me. Well, not me, before now- anyways, the only real research on the topic is a friend of mine who got very bored and came up with an algorithm to predict how things are gonna go. Nice woman, Nyssa. I think I drove her crazy sometimes but she was bloody smart. Here we are!” He presses a button on the device in his hand and starts drawing circles in the air, looking at Rose every two seconds, blue lines tracing his movements. The little computer sucks them in like a vacuum cleaner and chugs along for a second before making a noise that sounds very like a typewriter.

The Doctor pops up to sit beside her. “It’s normal, then, that,” he says, gesturing at her bump, “you’re supposed to run about fifteen months.”

“Blimey- did you say fifteen?”

“Don’t look at me like that! Human gestational periods are blissfully short. Besides, you already got six of that out of the way.”

“Any other bombshells? You going to ground me for the next nine?”

“No, no, why would I? You’re doing fine. There’s no reason for us to stop traveling, unless you want to. Do you want to?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, you’re right, there’s no stopping you- that’s good, I don’t really want to.” Suddenly he twists around, digging through gadget piles until he finds something else. “Hold this.”

It’s like a living wire, wrapping around her wrist tight enough to hear her own pulse in her head. In the dead space of the medbay forms a tiny silver sun, a pinprick of light, growing out in four directions like the roots of a tree until it becomes the image of Rose Tyler spun out of silver thread.

Rose hops down off the table and walks up to it in awe, watching her own heart beat with a white pulse.

“Quantum field generator. Just flashy, doesn’t do much.”

“Seems a bit superhero.” Rose comments, then notices the devious expression on his face. Her eyes flick down, and she loses her breath for a moment. “Is that-?”

He nods and walks up behind her to take her hand. Rose stares into the second form of the image, a tiny ball of gold thread that isn’t much more than a rough sketch of limbs and a heartbeat.

“Thought you might want to see it.”

Rose covers her mouth with her hand and nods, unable to speak.

The Doctor grins and kisses her temple. “Breakfast, eh, love?” He drops the word so easily, like he’s realized how stupid he’s been to leave it unsaid and needs to make up for it.

“Yeah, sounds great.”

Breakfast at Mickey’s was good, and he took care of her better than anyone she could have asked for, (aside from the man next to her, but half the time it was her taking care of him), but this was were she belonged, this was more than a ship or a family, this was home.

_-tick-  
_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My computer is confiscated until Christmas and I'm deep in finals. It's basically a miracle and the good will of my best friend that you're getting this.
> 
> Note from said best friend: Hello! You guys should totally send this chica some love 'cause she is amazing.

2.  
“I missed Christmas.” says Rose, playing with the switches on the TARDIS as he scribbles something aggressively on a post-it for the growing collection on display. “We were gonna head up to the Tyler mansion the next morning, but then you showed up.”  
“Missing your mum?” It’s not hard to guess why she’s bringing this up.  
“Yeah.”  
“Did she- did she know?”  
Rose shakes her head. “I was going to tell her over Christmas. Guess it’s better this way, yeah?”  
“I suppose.” He stares at her for a moment, then pets the TARDIS. “Are you bringing Christmas up for a reason? Cause there’s this planet covered in Christmas trees, biggest marketplace in the universe, and every day-”  
“No, no. I wasn’t- maybe some other day."  
Somewhere, a noise that sounds vaguely like a cross between a klaxon and a goose starts going off.  
"Is that a phone?" Rose asks, bemused.  
"Oh yeah, go ahead and pick that up. Over by the dimensional transcender-thing that looks like a gobstopper."  
"Since when have you had a phone?"  
"Kind of a long story."  
Rose finds what he talking about, an ancient looking black wall phone set inches deep in clutter.  
"Hello?"  
"Doctor-"  
"Sarah Jane? That you?"  
The voice at the other end stops cold, almost in shock. "Sorry, Rose, I seem to have hit the wrong year."  
It takes Rose a second to realize- she's dead, back on Earth. Offcially. "No, you're fine. You're at the tail end of 2007, right?"  
"Early 2008; actually. It's really you?"  
"It's me."  
"But the Doctor- he said you were gone-"  
"Everything's alright, I swear. He got me back."  
"That's wonderful! I hope he didn't do anything too insane."  
"That depends on your definition of insane."  
"I've got something you might be interested in. April 13th, 2008, St. James Hospital, some very suspicious deaths."  
"You could join us."  
"Oh, I don't know-"  
"Please! I'd love it."  
"Well, alright. I'll meet you in the park just across from the hospital."  
"What time?"  
"Somewhere in the morning, I'm not particular."  
Rose tilts the phone away from her ear and quickly relays this to the Doctor. "Can't wait to see you, Sarah Jane."  
"Tell him he must have quite the story to tell!"

"So why did you get a phone again?" Rose asks, settling on a park bench as the Doctor locks up the TARDIS.  
"Oh, that was Donna."  
"Donna?"  
"I met her over Christmas, she just appeared in my TARDIS. Out of nowhere, I swear! She'd been drugged with huon energy by this spider, transported straight from her wedding, and she kept shouting about how rubbish it was that a "call box" didn't have a phone. Brilliant woman, you would have loved her, almost got her to come along. She's the reason I kept looking for you."  
"What?"  
He nods. "Told me not to give up until I exhausted every star in the universe. She saved my life, you know. Pulled me out of a flooding tunnel."  
"How many stars did you actually exhaust?"  
"Oh, just the two that I used. But I had to test a lot, took me years."  
"Years? For me?"  
"Of course." he replies, and the way he says it, like there was never even a thought to say anything else, scares her a little. It shouldn't, after all this, but it does.  
 _Would you do the same? Wait for years?_  
 _Yes!_  
It's a split-second reaction, almost as easy as breathing, but instead of frightening her, it heals the rift opened a second before. She would- she has, although not quite as long-and she would again.  
She just doesn't want to.

"Rose!" Sarah Jane appears a hour or so later, waving frantically from the parking lot across the way. She runs across the grass as Rose untangles her limbs from the Doctor-cuddling in public, what has she become- and leaps up to wave back.  
"It's good to see you again!" Rose hugs her, standing only a few inches back when she breaks it. It's only then she realizes her hoodie has ridden up a bit, and she pulls it down self-consciously. Sarah Jane can't help but notice, mouth hanging open for a split second before brushing it off. "Congratulations!" she tells Rose, and she means it. "He called me, you know. After you disappeared. Asking me for help, can you imagine?"  
"You're more help than you realize, Sarah." the Doctor says, getting up off the bench to hug her too. "So what's this case?"  
"A friend sent me the tip. In the past five days three people have died and shown up in the mortuary drained of all blood. Just sucked dry! They were sent to hospital for life-threatening issues, and it's all been covered up very cleanly. Whoever's doing this is smart, they all died when staff was at it lowest, and two of them were in electronically-monitored comas- no one was around."  
"We'll need someone on the inside, then, if they're intelligent. I can go and-"  
"I'll go." Rose cuts in.  
"What?" The Doctor doesn't seem to like this idea.  
"It's obvious, innit? They'll let the pregnant lady in without even thinking twice but I'm not exactly going to be under maximum surveillance."  
"Rose, I-" He contemplates fighting it and realizes he doesn't have a chance. Besides, she's more than capable of taking care of herself. "Here, take this."  
He's handing her his sonic screwdriver.  
"You're gonna get stuck," Rose says pointedly, "stuck in a room with some stupid alien and get yourself eaten all because you're worried about me. I can pick a couple locks."  
"I've got this." Sarah Jane sighs, and digs in her purse until she pulls out a thin gold tube. "Sonic lipstick."  
"Sarah Jane, you are brilliant!" With a flash the Doctor's playing with it, black glasses perched on his face to inspect it closer. "How long have you had this?"  
"I've been busy, Doctor, can't leave the planet alone when you're not around. I've got a couple friends from offworld."  
He grins cheekily. "Well, that is very you. Rose, be careful."  
"I don't know why you even bother saying that."  
.....  
Rose stays restlessly awake, lying in her flimsy little hospital gown and measuring the hours by the stream of nurses in the outer hall. By three it's dead quiet, the beeping of the various machinery the only thing in the room. She slides a hand into the purse dangling off the side of the bed, digging for the sonic and waiting for the machinery to go silent without even removing it.  
Time to hunt some vampires.  
This isn't the most exposed she's ever been- it's remarkable, the number of nudity planets out there- but something about wandering the halls with just a screwdriver feels flimsy, every soft echo of her bare feet against the metal floor painfully obvious in the silence. The AC is running so high she can nearly see her own breath, freezing to death in what's essentially a piece of paper. Rose's street clothes are back in the room, and she's starting to regret at least not grabbing her jacket.  
She pauses at the elevator sign, wondering whether she should pursue the mortuary (bottom floor as creepily predictable, Sarah Jane and the Doctor will be down there) or the coma ward (crawling with doctors but also the next victim) when it dings at the same moment the sky opens with an earth-shattering crash. She shrieks, startled, and so does the occupant of the elevator, giving Rose just enough time to run down the hall before it opens. It looks like she's just stumbled out of her room.  
"Storm wake you?" The doctor asks, stepping out only because she sees Rose. "Scared me half to death."  
"I know, it was quiet earlier."  
"Hit the wrong button by accident, I was so badly startled. Not even supposed to be on this floor, I was just going to get coffee-"  
"Hell of a shift."  
"Well, you know how it works, students get shafted." She pauses. "I don't even know why I'm talking this much, isn't that odd?"  
Somewhere along the way, Rose begin to notice this, how being exposed to the Doctor for prolonged periods of time just makes people want to ramble.  
"It happens."  
Another powderkeg thunderclap rattles the hospital.  
"It must be pouring out there!" The med student races to the window, fingers pressed against the glass. "What the hell?"  
"What?" Rose joins her at the window.  
"The rain's going up!" At first glance it looks normal, but the droplets slide up by some unseen force, like gravity has gone "fuck it" and left.  
"What did you say your name was?" Rose asks.  
"Martha, Martha Jones."  
"Rose Tyler. Get ready to run."  
The lightning tightens its grip around the hospital, hissing so close to the windows that they crackle with static, finally letting lose a crash so resounding it feels more like an earthquake than a thunderclap. The whole hospital shivers, tremors sending Rose crashing to the floor, Martha barely staying on her feet. "We've moved!" she shrieks, after regaining her feet. "But it looks like-we can't-"  
This is how it always begins.  
They crash into the Doctor on the way down to the lobby, going on and on about plasmavores and yes, they are on the moon. He sacrifices his coat for Rose, Martha stays weirdly calm when the Judoon come crashing in, and all the time the Doctor keeps making that face at Rose until she rolls her eyes and whispers to him _yes, we can keep her._  
"They're looking for nonhumans." Rose tells him, when they're running low on time and he really needs a diversion. "Let me distract them, I'll confuse them for a while."  
"Wait, how would she-" Martha is having a couple issues with the whole alien thing.  
"They'll be baffled by you." the Doctor replies. "And I can't guarantee anything."  
"It'll give you time, and I can run. Just go."  
Martha finally connects the dots, and her head stars spinning. How many aliens are in this hospital, anyways? Or half-aliens?  
She's scary calm, though, handling things with a beautiful levelheadedness, so much so that after she saves the Doctor and by extension all of them, he goes out of his way to get her a few nights later.  
"What exactly are you asking?" she says as she watches Rose's fingers drum against the surface of the TARDIS, some kind of nervous energy pulsing out with the same rhythm that makes the Doctor practically bounce.  
"Come with us. Just a couple trips, you know. I think I owe you, and all of time and space is a pretty good payoff."  
"The three of us. In that box."  
Rose grins mischievously. "Want to see it?" She can see the Doctor mentally counting down the seconds to Martha's shriek as he nudges the door open.  
"It's bigger on the inside!"  
"Think you'll come along now?" he asks again, sliding in behind them, and shutting the door. Rose is already ticking things at the console- and he forgets, that she's not just fooling around when she does that, that she actually knows what every dial and switch does, even if she can't read his post-it's. The TARDIS is becoming less of a refined ship and more of a conglomeration of its parts, with sticky notes on every surface of the console and the shoddily-repaired lock on the heart of the TARDIS (a symbolic gesture by Rose, the TARDIS could have fixed it herself) and the fact that none of the rooms have the same desktop theme anymore. It's not what you would expect out of a timeship, but he tries not to make a habit of being what people expect.  
Sarah Jane got left-well, volunteered- to handle the press on this one. He wonders how domestics are working for her, if that son she kept babbling about is as nice as she says, wonders how he'll handle it.  
"Oi. Earth to Doctor." Rose snaps him back to reality. When he'd been off, earlier, she'd been talking to Sarah Jane about what she could feed the press, how easy it'd be to cover up. "Is he alright?" she'd asked suddenly."It's why I came along. I wanted to make sure."  
"Honestly?" Rose had replied. "Better than I expected. He always said he didn't do families, but I'm starting to realize that was a fancy lie to keep my mother out."  
She wonders if this is where his mind is now.  
"Yes?"  
"Where are we going first?"  
"What do you think, Martha? Past or future?"  
"Past, I guess. Always wanted to meet someone from the past."  
He grins at Rose. "I've got the perfect place."  
 _-tock-_


	3. Chapter 3

3.1 frozen

Rose does not sleep like a cat or a doll or any other metaphor pulled out of the Hipster Dictionary.

Rose sleeps like a human being; messy hair scattered across her face, tangled up limb for limb with the nearest warm body, sucking up heat like a leech and stealing all the covers. For whatever cosmic reason, it’s particularly cold this morning, something gone wrong with the internal heating- _again_ , she’s been bugging him to fix that all week- so she’s a cocoon of blankets pressed up against his chest.

“Rose.”

“Mmph. No.” she mutters, eyes barely fluttering open. “Too early.”

“It’s almost eleven.”

“Time doesn’t exist in the vortex.” Even her half-awake arguments are hard to fight, especially when she steals his better ones.

He extracts himself from the tangle just enough to lean over her and press a featherlight kiss to her forehead, sweeping the blonde mess into something a little less hazardous. “C’mon, love. Martha was at the door ten minutes ago, she’s been up for hours and wants to get going.” He lures her awake with sugar-sweet words, Rose swatting him off playfully.

“I swear,” she sighs offhandledy, “it’s like we’ve already got a kid.”

He ignores that last statement, just tugs her further out of her cocoon until she sighs a _fine_ and rolls away from him. “I’ll meet you downstairs, go get dressed.” she yawns.

Martha is wrapped up in at least three sweaters, breath making frosty clouds in the library, book balanced on her tucked-under knees. “Tell him to fix the central air already,” she grumbles, “it shouldn’t be this cold on a timeship.”

“I’ve already mentioned it, believe me.” Rose is in a massive sweater herself, something blue, fuzzy, and ugly that her mother would have worn. She had resolved herself to not break into the ugly maternity clothes the TARDIS kept sticking in her section of the wardrobe, but the temperature was wanting to make her go for them simply for the fact that she could layer up even further.

The Doctor shows up half a second later, not even in his suit jacket yet, finishing the knot on his tie. “What?” he says, looking at the expressions on both their faces. “Something wrong with the color?”

 _Most idiotic genius in the universe,_ Rose thinks. “It’s bloody freezing! Did you think I was just wearing this for fun?”

“Oh-yeah-I’ll fix it. Sometime today.”

“Married.” coughs Martha under her breath, although it doesn’t quite elicit the response she was going for. Rose just rolls her eyes and walks off, Martha marking her place in her textbook as she realizes they’re about to get going.

“How come you can fly the TARDIS?” Martha asks Rose, who’s fumbling around with icy fingers, waiting for coordinates from the Doctor. “You’re not alien. Do I get a driving lesson?”

“It’s kind of complicated.” Rose says, uneasy. “The TARDIS and I had a conversation once. She decided to let me remember how to fly her.”

“You talked. To a ship.”

“The TARDIS is alive.” the Doctor says, pausing to set a hand on Rose’s waist and flip the coordinates onscreen.

“Alive? Like, she sees everything that goes on the ship.”

He nods. “Haven’t you noticed? Things you wanted just lying around?”

“She’s in my head?”

“Psychic matrix. It’s- remember Spain, how they all spoke English? She gets in your head, translates for you.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“Where are we going?” Rose asks. “Somewhere warm?”

“Well.....no. Figured since you were already bundled up-”

“Let’s just get it over with.” sighs Martha.

“No you’ll love it! I swear!” They land with mild fanfare- things always seem a bit quieter with Rose flying, but not by much- and Martha braces herself for the icy blast of wind she suspects is coming.

“C’mon!” Rose flings open the door. It’s unearthly silent; no wild howl of ice crystals, Martha’s boots making tiny dents in the snow as she wanders into the icy cave.

“Drydena! Home of the most beautiful ice caves in the Andromeda Galaxy. Told you it’d be worth it.”

The white soars above their heads, an icy chapel in perfect stillness, roof stretching to an unseen sky. A rainbow of light dances their instead of stars, racing down the sides as it detects their presence, freeing itself from crystalline to float free in the air, becoming red-lit horses at Martha’s feet, a bright bird on the shoulder of the Doctor, twisting curls of light and color into the air with the elegance of a master carver.

“Well?” the Doctor asks expectantly, the _I_ _told you so_ not even needing to be said.

“It’s perfect.” Rose breathes, curling her fingers around his.

  
  


3.2 the lazarus experiment

"Do me up?"

Rose watches him attempt for the third time to do his bowtie, holding the back of her dress together. He looks up and stops dead, the bowtie falling flat around his neck.

"What?" she asks.

"You look gorgeous."

"Shut up." she laughs.

"No, I mean it!"

"I know." she says simply, walking over so he can get at her zipper. His hands fumble for a second on the metal. "This is getting too small on you."

"Everything is." she sighs. "There's a bigger one in the wardrobe, I debated it, but...." She unconsciously rests a hand on her belly. "No point hiding it anymore, really."

"I suppose." he grins, finishing the zipper and letting her take a stab at the bowtie.

"How on earth do you-"

"I don't have a clue, and I'm never wearing one again."

"You do realize Martha's family is probably going to be there."

He makes a face. "Eeek. If they're anything like you mother- I mean, nothing against your mum, but that could get interesting."

"Yeah, not looking forward to it." She manages to tie his bowtie properly- that's miraculous, how did she do it- and rests there, still inches away from him. "I realized I'm still wearing my dad's ring though, so I guess we could-"

She cuts off the sentence half-way, realizing what she's suggesting, wanting to dodge the topic so badly she doesn't know what to do. It's been floating in the air for a while like a virus, neither one of them talking about it, and to even bring it up-

He sees her catch on the end of her sentence and leans forward to kiss her, stealing the awkward pause off her lips, letting it get lost in the soft presses of their mouths and his hand sliding around her waist.

Martha coughs loudly from the doorway, and Rose draws back with a soft sigh, patting his bowtie with a smile.

"We gonna go see my sister or what?" Martha rolls her eyes; this is always happening to her.

"Yeah, sorry."

 

3.3 gridlock

Y

“You,” she whispers,”are not alone. That’s not exactly something we didn’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got me.”

“Rose, I don’t think that’s what he meant.”

She drops her head, pretending to be interested in her book.

“You okay?” he asks.

“He paid for our first date.”

A

And she cried then, quietly, hand pressed against the glass, but this time it’s decidedly not as dignified and a little more hysterical.

“This is stupid.” she mutters, finally catching a hold of herself. “We met him three times, he was millions of years old. I shouldn’t be crying this much.”

N

“No,” he tells her, “it’s fine. I get it.”

“Yeah, I’m weirdly hormonal. Martha could tell me that. God, I’m a mess.”

“Doesn’t change a thing. Hey. Promise me something.”

A

“Anything.” She doesn’t even blink.

“Promise me you won’t get snatched up by people stuck on a roadway who need a third passenger again.”

“That’s a stupidly specific thing to promise, but ok.”

“It makes me feel better.”

“I know it does; why do you think I’m promising?” It’s his attempt to change the subject away from the Face of Boe. They both know this is just going to keep happening, them getting separated from each other. It’s one of the perils of traveling with the Doctor. What matters is getting back together again in the end.

And after all that’s happened, she doesn’t have a doubt they can’t do that.

 

3.4 up to something

She sits cross-legged on the floor in the library, not caring about how tight her dress sits across her belly, one hand dancing over the bump growing there with a glimmer of a smile on her face. Her hair is still sleep-ruffled and wild, pulled back in a rough-shod ponytail, the dark bags under her eyes barely covered with a thin layer of makeup, pen poised in her fingers. Martha is somewhere else in the endless ship, somewhere else in this sea of metal, and it’s just her, sitting here like it’s a lazy Saturday back in her apartment in Pete’s World, picking through a magazine and circling something with careful precision. He never saw her those days, doesn’t know what her life was like in those months without him. He can only imagine her then, waking late and working outside her office for hours before finally getting up the resolve to get some real clothes and go to work.

“Hey.” he prompts, leaning back against the nearest bookcase with a smile. The library feels thick enough to be a forest here; the old-growth bookshelves the trees, packed with rings of books that hide all they have seen.

Rose lifts her head and brushes a flyway strand of blonde away from her face, carefully pushing the magazine away from her like she doesn't want him to see what’s in it. “Hey.” she breathes in reply, and he settles in the same cross-legged position in front of her, leaning forward to first kiss her forehead and then her belly. Rose slips her hand back there with an endearing smile, feeling the rocking movement of the baby inside her like it knows its father is saying hello.

“What are you doing up so early?” If she was in that hypothetical London flat, he can imagine the tiny pieces of sunlight making cracks across her windowpanes. Instead there’s the eternal mid-light of the vortex beyond the doors, never quite a time or season.

“Couldn’t sleep.” she offers. “Did I wake you?”

“Not your fault. I woke up and you were gone.”

“The TARDIS is up to something.” she says suddenly, pointing to one of the magazines with her tongue between her teeth. “I keep finding these.”

He picks one up, flimsy paper sticking to his fingers. “This is Stryxian. Does the translation matrix even catch this?”

“Yeah, give it a minute.”

He wrinkles his face up. “Nursery stuff?”

“I told you she’s been up to something. I’ve been leaving ‘requests’.” She traces the air quote with her fingers, and he has a sudden panic attack when he realizes how close they are. Just a little over five months and there’ll be a new life in the TARDIS, a life he helped create. He’s not quite sure he can handle being a father again, That first time was so many lives ago, ending in fire and blood-

Rose knows, she always knows, pulling him out of his distant flash of fear with a tiny tug at his wrist. “You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s nothing. Have you been in here a lot?”

“I haven’t really slept this past week, s-baby’s been waking me up-” There’s a tiny slip on her words,a catch of the tongue, and he leans forward with sudden enthusiasm.

“You know!”

“Know what?” She plays it coy, pretending she doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

“If it’s a boy or a girl, you know, I know you do!”

Rose giggles. “Maybe?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know, you just seemed like the type of bloke who wouldn’t want to know,”

“Rose, why would I want to wait? I have a _time machine_. I never have to wait for anything.”

“You have to wait for me.” she says plainly, and he can’t argue with that.

“Come on, tell me.”

Her hand lingers on her belly, teeth worrying her bottom lip. “You sure?”

The Doctor nods eagerly.

“A girl.”

He sits there, thunderstruck, watching the building expression on her face. “A girl?” His voice comes out very weak and funny-sounding, and dammit if he doesn’t sound just as scared as he feels. “That’s wonderful.”

Rose leans up to kiss him first this time, letting him curl his fingers into her blonde mess, lightning-strike smile bleeding into the kiss. “Excited?” she purrs.

“Can’t wait.”

 

3.5 a history

They’ve been “married” maybe a hundred times now, starting from the first week she was traveling with him, and God, how awkward was that? She always got rather creative with getting rid of the guards afterwards to get out of the associated activities. Clever girl. It’s there he started falling in love with her.

And then he had to go and regenerate, and she stopped getting rid of the guards, and maybe he started to enjoy these fake marriages a little more than he should. State-sanctioned sex, who could argue? (Or,that was Rose’s line a number of times.)  It was a safe bet to say they created their daughter sometime during one of these; right after Krop Tor they’d hit a solar system that wouldn’t even talk to unmarried women. Planet by planet, all five of them, and it was worth it in more ways than one.

Now, most planets have just assumed they’re married, and it’s Martha who gets crap. Rose’s creativity goes toward inventing a myriad of reasons as to why she can stay unmarried. Occasionally, though, Martha gets a free pass and they still get bundled into another fake marriage.

Those are the times he thinks about asking her to make that one count.The last one was on Kroll, two weeks ago, and he very nearly did.  

It’s stupid, really. Rose doesn’t seem like the type.

And yet the question remains.

(Martha thinks he’s an idiot for wondering this at all. She knows Rose wouldn’t hesitate to say yes.)

_-tick-_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE MY LAPTOP BACK. HALLELUGIAH. Translation: updates will resume as normal. No more two-week waits.  
> I'm slipping classic references into so many things by accident now. kudos if you caught them.  
> considering i love the "hipster dictionary" when i'm writing (all those metaphors), that first line is highly ironic. also i'm the queen of inconsisitent formatting.


	4. Chapter 4

4\. blink

“You pay per person.” says the innkeeper. “One room, not one person.”

Rose lets out an exasperated sigh and digs in her pocket for another handful of coins. “Fine.”

“No,no. Three people. Not two.”

“Is he serious?” she mutters, side-eyeing the Doctor.

“She’s close, yeah? If somethin’ ‘appens, I expect to be paid for all three of ya.” He’s got the biggest shit-eating grin on his face, he must think he’s _brilliant._

“Asshole.” Rose mutters.

“There’s nowhere else we can get tonight, and I’ve got the money.” The Doctor rolls his eyes at the innkeeper, but finishes off the considerable coin pile as the innkeeper passes over their room key.

Martha is sitting over in the bar area of the inn, watching some intergalactic football game on the telly as they join her. Arkaenos was tricky, a hub for Time Agents that made it impossible to land directly in the city. They’d had to park the TARDIS out in the farmlands outside the city and take a shuttle in. At night, the city’s streets flooded with poisonous gas from the indigenous plant life, and due to the usual combination of things, they’d gotten stuck here until the sun rose. The innkeepers here ran a monopoly, knowing that the people staying there didn’t have any other choice, basically charging whatever they wanted.

“They should call this place Thenardier’s, not the Drunk Giraffe. I don’t think my wallet’s ever been this light.” Martha grumbles.

“Martha, it’s not even your money.”

“Where do you even get all that, anyway?” Rose asks. “Are your pockets transdimensional as well?”

“Same technology as the TARDIS. I could fit a planet in here, theoretically- actually, I have.”

“But you carrying money, that’s new.”

“Blame Donna, she needed cash and kept yelling at me for not having any....here, look at this.” He pulls out a handful of American dollars. “See how those have a date on them?”

“Yeah...”

With a buzz of the sonic, the date changes from 2003 to 1986. “Psychically modified. The receiver sees whatever they expect.”

“That’s useful.” Rose shifts in her chair for a moment, trying to fix her dress. “Do I really look-”

“Sort of. But he was just being a cheapskate.”

“You know with all these Time Agents here, we could run into Jack.”

“What’s the point? He wouldn’t recognize us.”

“And once again, I have no idea who you two are talking about.” Martha stares down the Doctor. “Are you getting fidgety already?”

“You know I don’t like being stuck anywhere.”

“It’s just for the night.” Rose reminds him, then reaches for her pocket. “Oh, Martha, nearly forgot, I got you this.”

She’s holding a tiny black box the size of her palm, the outside buzzing with lights.

“What is it?” Martha turns it over in her hands, pressing a button on the underside. It expands out into a neat-sized medical device. Arkaenos has been embroiled in hundreds of civil wars, so they’re hardly rare here, but it’s the sort of thing she would have loved to have at St. James.

“Can I-?” She turns to the Doctor before putting it in her purse.

“Oh, it’s only about two hundred years ahead of Earth tech, as long as no one really sees it. Just be careful with where you use it.”

“Yes sir.” she smiles, then thanks Rose. They’ve all picked up little things on their adventures, trinkets gathering around the TARDIS and a couple of things they actually use.

Rose shifts again as her baby decides to kick around, noticing with amusement that she’s hardly the most fidgety out of all of them. He’s always moving, her Doctor, and she’s enough like him that it doesn’t bother him; she could never stay completely still either. She knows he only stays until she falls asleep most nights, although he makes an effort to stay longer; only keeps to something of a clock for her sake.

And she’s accepted it, it’s how they’ll always be. Really, she doesn’t mind.

......

“Come on then! Out to the unknown!”

“Did you use the randomizer again?” Rose takes his hand as she steps out of the TARDIS.

“Not a clue where we are. It’s more fun that way.”

“Oh, it’s some disgusting little graveyard.” Martha wrinkles her nose at the smell of rotting plants. “Don’t rat on graveyards.” Rose says. “My mate Shareen and I used to explore them all the time when we were kids.”

“Are we on Earth?” Martha is already half-vanished; it’s thick enough to be a forest.

“I think so. Looks like Earth- well, a lot of planets do, that’s not much to go on, I guess. Rose, where’d you go?”

“You’ve got to come see this, Doctor, there’s a grave with an angel on it.”

“What, like a little one?”

Rose shakes her head. “Tall as I am. And it’s _crying_.”

“Crying? But it’s _stone!”_

Rose turns her head to look at him. “I’m serious, you’ve got to-”

With a flash, she’s gone.

“Rose? Rose!”

There’s a stone angel standing where she was a second before, hand outstretched, a devilish smile on its face.

“Give her back to me.” the Doctor growls, the light of his sonic making the impish thing even more terrifying.

“Doctor? Where is she?” Martha’s eyes are glued to the creature.

“I don’t know! Wait. Sally Sparrow. Do you remember her? Girl in the street, said something about angels. Weeping angels.”

“Vaguely. But that was weeks ago- the Cadadium Lizard, I think. Is that where Rose is? Can you get to her?”

“Well,” he breathes heavily, “I don’t think it can get to us when we’re looking at it. I’m standing right in front of it, it’s not doing anything, but it got Rose when she looked at me...Martha, you don’t have to come with me, I can stare at it long enough for you to leave. We’ll come get you once we’ve got the TARDIS.”

“Yeah, think again, I’m coming with you. Don’t even know what year this is, so how is it any different?”

“I suppose you’re right,” he says, and closes his eyes.

Stone closes around his wrist, pulling him through an unseen tunnel with the force of the TARDIS, knees making contact with a foreign pavement. A moment later Martha appears out of dust, rolling onto her back with a little noise.

“Oh, go on, I’m fine.” she sighs, and he’s off like a dart.

“Rose?”

“Over here!” She’s sitting cross-legged on the edge of a fountain, staring up suspiciously at a bronze horse topping the cascade.

“I don’t think a horse is going to hurt you, Rose.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to be sure, I didn’t think the angel was going to hurt me!” she laughs.

“You okay?”

She nods, standing up to wrap her arms around him. “My head’s killing me, but I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, time travel without a capsule, that’ll do you in. Martha, are you okay?”

“Perfectly normal. Rose, you missed the bit where he yelled at the statue.”

“I can imagine.” She rubs her arms, breath clouding the air. “Blimey, it’s cold out here.”

“Want my coat?”

“Won’t you be cold?”

“Superior Time Lord biology, I’ll be fine.”

“That’s you answer to everything, that is.” she replies with a sigh, throwing the tan over her shoulders. “I don’t think it was this late when we left...can someone find a clock?”

“I think I’ve got that covered.” says Martha, dragging Rose around the corner.

“Oh! Hello! Haven’t seen you in a while.”  Big Ben stares them in the face, ticking out four-thirty like black scars across the moon.

“It’s still in one piece, I’d forgotten how it used to look like. Remember in 2005, big alien ship crashing through it?” Martha says.

“Yeah, we were there. They repaired it?”

“I’m not surprised, and of course they repaired it, it’s a national landmark! Blimey, you must have been around to see the new work.”

“No, no..not really.” He sighs. “Haven’t been in London in a while, actually. Been...busy. Just pop in on occasion.” He looks over at Rose for a second, and Martha knows to drop it. “You know, I should probably-Rose, left pocket, there should be a folder in there somewhere.”

It takes her considerably longer to find it than it probably would have taken him, but then again, he’s responsible for the utter lack of organization in those pockets. “This thing?”

“Yeah, that. Does it say what year we’re in?”

“1969.”

“I like 1969, that’s not bad at all.” muses Martha. “We went to the moon landing, what, twice?”

“Three times, I think. We might as well get going, we’ve got messages to leave for a certain Sally Sparrow. She needs to get us back home.”

“Doctor-”

“Rose, you coming?” He and Martha are already halfway down the street, scepters in the clock tower's light.

“Doctor, it’s not that easy. She’s not gonna come get us tonight.”

“Why not?”

Rose holds up a piece of paper. “Transcript of some conversation we had. Martha mentions we’ve been stuck here for a month.” She’s stuck somewhere between panic and disbelief, waiting for him to say it can be reversed, because this is really not the time for them to be stuck anywhere.

 _Four months._ he reminds himself. _One out of the four is not the end of the world. She’ll be fine._

“I-ok. Then-” He doesn’t know how to respond to this, really, it’s nearly as bad as Krop Tor. At least this time they know they’ll be getting out. Maybe. But a month? In 1969?

“If we’re gonna be here that long, might as well find somewhere to stay. We can take care of all that later.”

Thank Rassilon for Martha Jones. She’s easily the most sensible of them all.

“Yeah, it’s nearly sunrise, we’re a bit suspicious out here this early.” Rose just goes with it; this is the usual order of craziness. Things just happen, and you’ve got to keep going.

However, the usual order of craziness isn’t quite this _domestic._

............

“What are you doing?” Rose asks, darting a hand over his shoulder to get to the bag of chips.

“A thing, little bit of jiggery pokery. Earth doesn’t have the DVD technology that we need yet, so I’m making it myself.”

“Several years early, as usual.”

“Several decades. Where’s Martha?”

“She went out.”

“Where? Where is there to go? I mean, I understand, it’s insufferable enough in here-” In three days he’s become as hyper as a three year old, whirling around their squatter’s flat and hardly sleeping. It’s mostly thanks to the Doctor that the place is even clean; when he broke in she barely wanted to touch anything, and they’d been in some pretty disgusting places. Three days, and she’s wondering how they’re going to make it a month.

“She said she was going to get a job.”

“A job? Why would she need to do that?”

She loves that man to the ends of the Earth (actually, they’ve been), she really does, but sometimes he is just so _daft._ “Your transcendental pocket cash reserves aren’t going to last us but a few more days. And sooner or later the neighbors are going to wonder when someone started living here, we might actually have to pay rent. There’s not exactly any cash points we can siphon off.”

“There are a couple.”

“Yes, but they’re ancient- it doesn’t matter, you know how I feel about that anyways, it’s basically stealing. Point is, we can’t float forever.”

“Yeah, but can you imagine me? With a job?”

“It’s a little crazy.” she admits.  “Never mind all that, I’ve got a way to get out of this house.”

“Really?” he perks up. Three year old. With sugar.

She leans over the table and taps one of the photo’s from Sally’s file, an old house with peeling wallpaper. “It’s just outside London, we can get back before Martha does.”

“You are brilliant.” he says with all honesty. “Coat’s on the couch.”

Of course they had to land in fucking _February._

(She likes wearing his coat anyways.)

A few hours later after sneaking into the brand-new manor and graffiting the walls (there may have also been an impromptu snog in the dining hall, she’ll never tell), they come home walking on a cloud- they’re _doing something._ Saving themselves.

Martha is more than a bit pissed.

She doesn’t say it, but Rose can feel it like a steam cloud when they come giggling through the doorway. “Been busy?” she huffs, but her annoyance goes sheer over the Doctor’s head. “Rose, I’d love a hand with dinner.”

.....

“Something wrong?” the Doctor asks when Rose wanders it out. It’s somewhere approaching midnight; and he’s still working.

“Can’t sleep. Would you-”

“Yeah, sure. I’ve been going for three days anyways, I’ve got to sleep eventually.” He pauses, watching Rose linger in the doorway. “What’s the matter?”

“I told you.”

“No, no, there’s something else.”

“It’s nothing.” she lies. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You,” he says, wrapping his arms around her shoulder so he practically carries her back to bed. “are a terrible liar.”

Rose hesitates. “Remember Krop Tor?”

“Seems to be the only thing I can think about, it was the only other time we ever got stuck.”

She laughs uncomfortably. “You were going on about having to get a mortgage.”

“Hell on Earth, that would have been. And there you were, ever so subtly saying we could live together, and I think my hearts nearly exploded.”

“Really?”

“Oh, come on, Rose. If I had to spend an eternity anywhere, the only place I’d ever want to stay is with you.”

“Mhmmm.”

That, of all things, is the last reaction he expected from her; Rose knows he doesn’t let out those explosive little statements that often. “Is it your mum? Cause I know, living in London again, getting stuck in this little domestic routine-”

“Yes. No. Sort of.” she sighs. “I miss my mum more than anything, you know that, but that’s not all- we’re going to have to do this, you know. After the baby’s born. Just stop for a while. And you’re dancing around all day because you hate this so much, not really talking to anyone, trying to get out and I can’t help wondering-”

“That I won’t be able to do it then? That’ll I just ditch you both somewhere while I gallivant around the universe? Never, Rose. Never.”

“Are you sure?”

That’s the last thing she says before she falls asleep, and it rolls around inside his head on repeat.

.....

“Gonna walk Martha to work today.” she tells him a few mornings later, “Thought she’d like the company.”

“See ya later.” His thoughts have become a string of worries about her, trying to get to the base of this sudden, unspoken argument, the thing hiding in the shadows. “Hang on, where’s she working?”

“Pawn shop down on First and Fifth, owned by a James Easting. All the traveling has given us a leg up.”

“Yeah, makes sense. She’d be good at that.”

When Rose comes down the next morning, there’s no sign of the Doctor; even Martha doesn’t know where he is. At first she worries, but then he’s back by dinner, not saying a word about where he’s been all day. Rose doesn’t ask, she just lets it go, assuming it was something to do with his gadgets.

And then it happens again, the next day, and the next, and all Rose can think is _what the hell is he doing_ because he comes home so _exhausted_ , in a way she’s never seen before.

They don’t talk about, their argument, even though they probably should, and she can’t help but feel that whatever is exhausting him is somehow his way of making up for it.

....

Billy Shipton, as it turns out, is a really nice bloke. A really nice bloke who probably didn’t deserve to get sent back to 1969, but that’s just how things turn out. Rose fakes a few papers for him, the same way she did for Martha when she started working, invites him to dinner a couple times. He has to live out the rest of his life here when they get to leave, so they might as well be nice to him.

Then Sally Nightingale wanders into Martha’s job, looking to sell a few of her mother’s  trinkets that aren’t exactly from this century. Martha pulls her usual hookup job, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Literally.

.....

Three weeks later they’re recording the videos for Sally Sparrow in their living room, transcript pinned to the telly underneath his camera.

“I’ve had to support them.” Martha extols to a distant Sally. “I’ve got a job. In a shop.”

“It’s not bad, I used to work in a shop.”

“Yeah, and now your main occupation is traveling the universe.”

The Doctor levels a glare at Rose, mouthing the words “transcript” until she makes a face back at him.

Martha wonders if Sally will be able to realize, thirty-eight years in the future, what utter _idiots_ her best friends are.

(Rose teases him about the wibbly-wobbly line for the next six hours.)

....

“Martha’s on a late shift, she won’t be home by dinner.” She’d made a grocery run of her own- holy shit they’d gone domestic. It wasn’t exactly a massively foreign concept to Rose the way it was to the Doctor, but here she was running errands again and dancing around like she still lived with her mom.

Regardless of what she’d told the Doctor, she desperately misses her mum, now more than ever. She doesn’t need to say it, he knows.

“Yeah, I know.” For once he isn’t covered by a pile of gadgets, but why would he be anymore? There’s nothing left to do but sit and wait. They made the video a week ago, he pulled a bit of electronic fuckery to ensure it ended up on those seventeen DVD’s, but there hadn’t been any miraculous TARDIS sounds in the flat. She didn’t know when it’d come back for them, but the longer they waited, the more worried she got. Rose knew they couldn’t stay here forever, not if they ended up with four instead of three. Martha’s salary couldn’t support that.

Suddenly the innkeeper’s fleecing on Arkaneos makes a lot more sense.

There’s a package on the table, something wrapped up in brown paper with a lop-sided little bow on it.

“What’s this?” Rose asks apprehensively, fingers skating the red ribbon. The Doctor appears out of the unlit hallway, standing ever-so-nervously to the side.

Something is very definitely up.

“An apology.” he says. “Go on, open it.”

She rips back the brown paper like a child on Christmas day, scattering bits across the table until her hand meet the packages lumpy insides. “I-”

“Thought you might be tired of having to use mine.”

He’s gone and bought her a coat, a lovely little gray thing that falls to her waist, still new enough to have the tags on it. “How’d you pay for this?” she can’t help but ask, because there is no way-

“You look lovely.” he says instead, helping her straighten the lapels as she puts it on. “I...may have gotten myself a bit of a job.”

“You what?”

........

THREE WEEKS EARLIER

“I’m serious, Martha, you’ve got to help me here.”

“It’s your problem, it’s your fault she’s mad at you.” Martha won’t even look him in the eye, focused on fitting a cog on the watch she’s repairing.

“You’re doing that wrong-”

“Shut up. My job.” She pulls it back across the counter. “And I’ll remind you, I’m at work, so why don’t you go back home?”

“Who’s your friend, Martha?” Martha’s boss, a rather large, red-haired man in his mid-fifties, is finishing up haggling with a customer over something.

“It doesn’t matter, he was just leaving.” Martha hisses.

“John Smith.” He doesn’t know why he introduces himself like that, maybe it has something to do with having to stay here for more than twenty-four hours.

“Bit of a common name.”

“Oh, but I’m a very uncommon man.”

He snorts. “Uncommon, eh? Rare enough to put that thing back together?” He’s gesturing at the watch Martha’s attempting to reassemble. “It’d be worth a fortune if the customer hadn’t brought it to me in pieces.”

“I could try my hand.”

Martha’s got a very puzzled look on her face. _Is he really-_

He’s got the watch fixed in five minutes, no sonic screwdriver, an idea forming in his head.

“That’s downright impressive.” says her boss. “We need a bloke around here to fix things, wouldn't have to turn down customers quite as much.”

“Alright.” replies the Doctor, and really, what the hell is he doing? This isn’t him. At all. And yet somehow he’s here in a shop getting himself a job.

He turns to Martha. “Don’t tell Rose about this.”

“I’m not sure I can believe it myself, so I don’t think she’d believe me.”

“Rose? That the lady who walks you here?”

“Yeah, she’s-” He struggles to put a word to it.

“Girlfriend? Hey, I won’t judge.”

The Doctor nods, because that’s the closest thing he can get to at the moment. Lover? Wife? They’re not actually married, but he knows she’ll never leave.

“You’ll need that cash in a month or so, I reckon. Welcome aboard.”

It’s quite easily the most mentally exhausting thing he’s ever done, staying focused on one task for so long. Mind-numbingly boring, too, after the first few hours, although if he was human he could see himself doing this. He never knew what somebody was going to drag through the doors, what they’d come looking for.

 _It’s for Rose_ , he reminds himself, and that’s how he keeps going back.

.............

“With Martha, it’s awful.” he admits. “But I managed it.”

There’s something in her coat pocket, a hard little lump that she’s scared to touch.

“I’m not saying I’ll be perfect at it, staying still.” he continues. “But this is me, promising to try.”

She reaches down into the coat pocket, hand closing around a little felted box, breath catching in her throat. He steps forward and closes his hand around it with hers, not able to look at Rose evenly, because she knows what’s in there.

“You,” Rose breathes. “are an idiot.”

“I’m your idiot. If you want.”

“Yes.” she says, “yes, of course, there’s no-”

Then she grabs onto his tie and his mouth is full of her strawberry sweetness, a real, proper, slow kiss, the kind they don’t get around to very often. For a second he forgets how to breathe, and maybe she’s crying a little bit, but in the end it’s perfect.

Rose’s hands slip down from his cheek to his waist, her head leaning against his when she draws back.

“You haven’t even seen it yet,” he laughs, “I’m rubbish at this.”

“You’re my idiot, of course you’re rubbish at this.”

The ring had floated into work a couple weeks previously, a dark-banded one that was a little unconventional but oh so very Rose, with a ruby instead of a diamond. Martha had caught him staring at when it changed hands over the counter and convinced James to hold on to it until the Doctor got the guts to actually buy it himself. It looks even lovelier sitting on Rose’s hand,and he thanks any deity that might be listening that Martha isn’t around to see this because she’s been badgering him about it for weeks and it’s not exactly the way she would have had him do it. But it’s very him and it’s cautious and there’s a lot of things he doesn’t have to say because _she knows._

“That’s very human of you.” Rose tells him, as they're curled up on the couch together. “The ring.”

“It was Martha’s idea. My people never used physical signs like that, you never needed one. Telepathic race, it was one of those things you just knew. And I know it’s not exactly-”

“Shh. You’re talking too much again, Mr. Tyler.”

She’s a warm spot next to him, ring on her hand, the other pressed up against the swell of her belly and if someone had appeared to him six years ago and told him _this is where you’ll be_ he never, _ever_ would have believed it.

When Martha comes home, that’s how they stay, asleep on the couch together and Martha rolls her eyes and mutters something about _fucking finally_ and leaves them be.

It’s another week before the TARDIS decides to reappear, Rose sitting in the kitchen picking through the paper when it decides to scatter the pieces all over the room.

“Ooh, she’s exhausted.” says the Doctor, racing out the instant he hears her engines. “The angels really hurt you, didn’t they, girl? We’ll have to make a fuel stop.”

“In Cardiff?” she guesses.

“Shouldn’t take more than a minute or so. Ready to get out of here?”

“Been waiting for weeks.” Martha’s already grabbed her bag.

Rose grabs her key and opens the door, breathing in the rusty smell of her home as the TARDIS welcomes them back.

_-tock-_

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of explanation before we begin- i had originally intended to do a full episode rewrite, but lbh that's incredibly tedious so i just wrote the important bits. i tried to leave enough cues so you know what part of the episode we're on; for the most part the rest sticks to canon. if anything's really confusing feel free to message me to fix it.

5.1 utopia

“Cardiff is a bit of a weird place to refuel.” notices Martha, leaning out the door into the usual gray sky. The clouds threaten to split at any moment, so she stays inside enough to duck and cover in case it starts raining.

“Why, what were you expecting?” The Doctor is hiding out of range of the chilly blast, cup of tea, balanced precariously in the console, steam clouding over the glass surface of the center column. Rose is leaning over to draw something in the condensation- Martha can’t see it, but whatever it is is making the Doctor very red in the face.

“I don’t know, a sun or something. What does the TARDIS even run on?”

“In the old days, power came from the Eye of Harmony, a supernova kept on the edge of collapse into a black hole. But when Gallifrey was destroyed, the Eye went with it, and I had to get a bit creative with my power systems.”

“There’s a rift in time and space in Cardiff.” adds Rose. “It bleeds time energy like the Eye used to. So we just stop for a little bit, fill her up, and off we go!”

“Used to take all day, but I’ve been making improvements, got it down to a few minutes.”

“Can’t you just, I don’t know, make another Eye?” asks Martha.

“Well...theoretically, yes. But it’d make the TARDIS so unstable that I’d have to park her for a couple years until I finished it.” If he intends on ever doing it, he doesn’t say.

“There was an earthquake in Cardiff a couple years ago. Would that happen to be you two?”

“Yeah, that was him. But that was ages ago.”

“I was a different man.” sighs the Doctor. The TARDIS _shivers_ , like a wet cat shaking off the rain, not enough to displace anyone from standing to the floor but enough to send the Doctor’s tea crashing to the floor. Rose quickly wipes off her work on the center console before picking up the shattered cup, tutting at the TARDIS like an old hen.

“She’s full!” announces the Doctor. “I’ve just got to turn the engines back on-”

Martha watches him scribble out a command on the viewscreen, then leans over and turns the outer cameras on on a whim. She’d heard someone shouting outside a few seconds ago, and she wanted to watch whatever drama it was unfold. Hopefully it was popcorn-worthy.

“Doctor, who’s that?” she finds herself asking instead, just as he finishes setting the coordinates for their next destination. There’s a man racing toward them, someone in a 1940’s coat  (and not bad-looking to boot).

The Doctor glances over for a second, his eyes widening as subtly as he can manage. “Moving on!” he shouts, and pulls the lever to send them rocketing off.

“Oh my God, that’s Jack-”

Rose barely has time to attempt to stop the TARDIS before something explodes in a firework of smoke and sparks on the console, sending them all flying back. The Doctor catches Rose as she goes down, one arm still around her as he pulls back up with him, attacking the viewscreen with a flurry.

“We’re accelerating into the year five million...ten billion...the year one hundred trillion? What? That’s impossible!”

The TARDIS richotchets to a stop, Martha picking herself up off the floor with a groan. “Why? What’s in the year one hundred trillion?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s funny, cause that’s not something I’ve never heard you say.” says Rose.

“I really don’t, not even the Time Lords came this far. It’s the end of the universe. We should go, we should really...”

“Wanna see what’s out there?” Martha prods.

He grins like a crocodile sizing up its dinner, making a dash for the door at the same time as his companions (although Rose is achieving more of a dignified waddle). She hardly gets three steps on the dirty ground before seeing Jack lying a few feet from the TARDIS.

“Oh my-I’ve got that medpak thing, just give me a second!” Martha fumbles in her bag while the Doctor drops in behind Rose, resting an arm ever-so lightly on her waist before she can dart to his side.

“Let Martha handle this one.” he orders quietly, but she’s not taking this at all.

“How the hell is it Jack? You said he stayed on the Station! And we were in the twenty-first century, how’d he get here?”

“I think he rode with us, clung to the outside of the TARDIS all the way through the vortex- well, that is very him.”

“Doctor, I’m sorry.” Martha apologizes, “there’s no heartbeat, he’s dead.”

“Dead?” Rose’s eyes go wide. “Doctor, come on, there must be something you can-”

With a sudden gasp, Jack sits up, deadman walking with that cheesy grin on his face. “Captain Jack Harkness, and who are you?”

“Oh, stop it.” scowls the Doctor, while Martha recovers from her heart-stopping moment of panic. “I don’t mind!” she flutters, while Jack continues his very shark-like smile as he springs to his feet.

“I was just saying hello!”

“Jack, every word you say is flirting. _Your name_ is your best pick-up line, I mean seriously, don’t pretend.” says Rose.

Jack stops cold when he sees her, looking more dead in those two-and-a-half seconds than he did when actually deceased. He’s careful, accessing timelines, and then when he realizes he’s got it right his smile could split the sky- he’d thought she was dead, but here she is, standing right where she should be.

“Rose!” He lifts her off her feet in a sweeping hug, Rose grinning from ear to ear.  “But Canary Wharf- I thought you were dead-”

“Yeah, not dead!” she laughs. “Been hearing that a lot lately.”

She’s better than that, better than just _not dead_ , she’s really and truly _living._

Behind her stands the Man Without a Plan But Maybe Working On One, the Doctor himself, and Jack feels obligated to salute. Or similar.

Instead he settles for a terse. “Doctor.”

“Captain.”

“Good to see you.”

“You too. Although....have you had work done?”

“Like you can talk!” Jack guffaws.

“Oh, yes, the face! Regenerated. Sorry.”

“I wasn’t just talking about the face.” he says, nodding at Rose. “I do believe I see something on her hand, hmm?”

“Erm...well...”

“All I was going to say is _about time_.”

“How’d you know it was me? With the different face and everything?”

“Police box sort of gave it away. You abandoned me.”

“Really?” Rose’s tone drops from gleeful to deadpan so fast the Doctor is shaking in his boots. “Because as I recall, he told me you stayed behind to help the survivors.”

The last deadly look is meant completely for her fiancee, and he spends more than a few seconds stumbling over his words, ending with one of his characteristic “well..”.

................................

“So tell me, Doctor,” asks Jack, hands resting on the stent column buttons. “Why can’t I die?”

“It was Rose. She absorbed the time vortex, brought you back to life with it, but she didn’t know what she was doing.When she brought you back, she brought you back forever. And I’m sorry, by the way, that I never told you.” He addresses the ceiling and the woman eavesdropping on the other end of the line. “I know your list of things to be angry with me over is just piling up right now.”

He doesn’t need to hear her to know the response, _too right they are_ , that huffy little sigh. They’ll discuss this mess in the TARDIS later, he suspects. At length.

“Canary Wharf.” Jack knows he’s about to breach a tricky subject, but he needs to know. “What happened there?”

“They got stuck,” sighs the Doctor, not looking at him straight, “in a parallel universe. Mickey, Jackie, all of them. I got Rose out, but everyone else was still there. She was stuck..oh, six months or so?”

“Let me guess, you didn’t know she was pregnant until she came back.”

“Yeah. Bit of a shock, that one.”

“How long until-”

“Three months.”

“You’re cutting that a bit close.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve been watching her, she’s still fine...determined we keep traveling, actually. But enough about me, Jack. Real question is, now that you’ve drunk from the Flame of Utter Boredom-”

“What?”

“Nevermind. Now that you can’t die, do you wish you could?”

Jack ignores him, pretending to be focused on the cannisters. “This one’s a little stuck-”

“Jack.”

“I thought I did. I don't know. But this lot. You see them out here surviving, and that's... _fantastic_.”

The Doctor grins cheekily and smiles at the ceiling.

“You’re a dead man when you get up there, aren’t you? You deserve it. ” Jack jests.

“Yes, yes I am.”

5.2 the sound of drums

“You leave them alone, Saxon!” Martha shouts suddenly into her phone, desperation cracking into her voice. The Doctor makes a lunge for it, but Rose gets there first. “Give me that.” she snarls, snatching the phone out of the Martha’s hands.

“Ooh, is our damsel in distress calling the shots now?” the Master taunts,and she ignores him with everything’s she’s got.

“First of all, fuck you.  Secondly, you lay a hand on any one of Martha’s family, and I will personally ensure you’re locked away somewhere dark, cold and ugly for all of eternity. I know plenty of suitable hellholes, that is a promise.”

“What can you do? You’re as big as an elephant.”

“Just watch me.” She pulls the phone away,Martha’s eyes wide, staring up at the security camera. It hisses before exploding into a cloud of sparks, Rose’s eyes caught with a gleam of gold for a fraction of a second.

“Have I got your attention?” she asks the Master.

“Perfectly clear. They won’t be hurt. Now can I speak to the hubby?”

“He was watching us?” mouths Martha, while the Doctor is staring at Rose with the kind of expression he usually reserves for really strange species as she hands him the phone.

“Something up with her, Doctor? I don’t need to see you to realize that.”  The Master plays off anything he can get a hold of.

“That’s not your problem. So, Prime Minister, then.”

“It’s good, isn’t it? I’ve even got my own henchmen. Never had henchmen before.”

“Who are they, the Toclafane? Cause I know that’s a not a real thing, it’s just a story-”

“Yes, the sort of fairy-story you might tell your kid? The ones they told us on Gallifrey, I used to love those so much. Where is she, Doctor? I looked and I looked but this world is so _limited._ ”

“Gone.” says the Doctor shortly. Rose, sitting close enough to him on the curb to hear the conversation, reaches out to put a hand on his arm in comfort.

“How? How can she be gone?”

“She burnt.” says the Doctor, and Rose can hear his soul ache. “The Time Lords, the Daleks...all gone. Well, most of the Daleks. There’s one still floating around. What about you?”

“The Time Lords only resurrected me to be their perfect little soldier. I got scared when the war started, did what any sensible person would do. I ran and hid myself  so far they would never find me, even became human to avoid them. And look at what that made me, a rickety old man. Chan’tho nearly shot me, you know. I’m wishing she had, I would have liked to regenerate into someone young and strong like you. The things I saw, Doctor, only in the first days of the war...how did you survive that? How did you make it through?”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, of course. And you were the one to end it all. How did it feel?”

“Stop it.”

“You must have been like God.” His voice turns utterly vicious.

“We’re the only ones left.” the Doctor replies, despondent. “Please, we can fight somewhere else, but not here. Not Earth. This planet doesn’t have anything against you.”

“Oh, but it does have everything for you. Martha. Your precious little Rose, pity her family isn’t around for me to touch. All your friends who would die for you in a heartbeat. Don’t you see, Doctor? The drums, the neverending drums, they’re calling me to move past this petty rivalry, the universe is calling our name. And if we are the only ones left, it’s my duty to remove your weak spot. Why not use it to take over the universe while we’re at?”

“Stop this, stop it now!”

“I don’t need a camera to know where you are, so many wonderful people have cell phones these days. Can you hear them, Doctor? Can you hear the drums?”

Rose jumps in her seat, grabbing on to his free hand so tightly he thinks a few of the bones in his hand might not be whole any more. “Doctor?” Across the way, a homeless man is tapping the same rhythm on his cup- _one two three four, one two three fou_ r, a drumbeat echoing over and over.

“Run!” shouts the Master. “That’s what you do so well, isn’t it? Run now!”

.............

The warehouse they take shelter in is not unlike Rose’s description of her various hellholes- a little dark, creepy and damp. Martha was deemed Safest To Send On A Food Run, returning with a rather massive bag of takeout that Jack immediately laid claim to. Well, most of it.

Rose is lying sleepily against the Doctor, fitting her head beneath his chin and looking absolutely knackered.

“Something’s weird.” she tells him, the quarrel momentarily forgotten on the priorities list. It’s not gone by any stretch of the imagination; he can still sense the tension in her about the Jack debacle. It’s just been shelved until they have time to address it. “Earlier..it was like I could hear the TARDIS again. Really hear her. And then it was just...gone. Do you think she’s trying to reach out to me?”

“I don’t know.” he admits. “And I don’t know how you managed that, you’ve never been able to before...”

“I was just so angry he would threaten Martha’s family, and I wanted to scare him...I’m just worried.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, me too.”

“You shouldn't worry about me.”

“The train to stop me worrying about you left the moment I met you, Rose Tyler.”

“Hey, lovebirds!” Jack shouts between mouthfuls. “I found something in the file Vivien sent Torchwood. Also, I want to know why you’re not trying to kill me over the Torchwood thing, cause really, that’s what I anticipated.”

“I was going to yell at you.” says the Doctor, snapping up and grabbing his glasses. “Then I remembered Rose used to work for Torchwood, realized it was probably a bad idea. For the record, her Torchwood was better than yours.”

“I told you, my Torchwood’s different from the old regime at Canary Wharf. We’re better now.”

“When did you work for Torchwood?” Martha asks Rose.

“Parallel universe.”

“Ah.”

“According to Vivien, the false records really started appearing with the launch of the Archangel network.” Jack starts.

“Hang on. What’s Archangel?” Rose is pretty much as culturally defunct as the Doctor at this point.

“It’s a phone network, they carry out all the other companies, everyone’s got it.” Martha explains.

“It’s in the phones! Just like Lumic, well, that’s just cheating. Martha!”

“Rip it apart.” she sighs, handing over her phone. The Doctor grabs his sonic out of his jacket pocket, amplifying the signal into a solid drumbeat.

“Do you hear that? Told you he was a hypnotist, but we can use it to hide ourselves. Rose, did you ever learn how to make a perception filter?”

“You kidding? First week on the job. Are we using the TARDIS keys?”

“The telepathic field should amplify it, that’s brilliant!” He swoops over to kiss Rose on the cheek. (although he’d probably thought of it himself and just hadn’t said it yet)

“Were they always like this?” Martha whispers to Jack.

“What, the googly eyes? _Constantly_. Except neither one had any idea how deep they were in.”

“Must have been hell.”

“Yeah, I could never decide whether I should hit them or lock them in a bedroom together and tell them to shag already.”

“Both.”

“Both is good.”

......................

“What are you doing, this isn’t the time for sightseeing!” Martha shrieks, as the Doctor suddenly stops in the middle of the stairway. “My family’s down there, and I don’t trust the promise he made Rose.”

“I can hear the TARDIS.” he says quietly.

“Well, about time!” Jack takes off first, heading in the direction the Doctor was pointing and launching towards the blue doors, key already in hand. Rose’s heart soars when it unlocks, but falls nearly as fast as red light greets her instead of the familiar yellow hum.

“What’s he done to her?” Martha gasps.

The Doctor races around the caged console like Simba playing with Mufasa’s corpse, attempting to stroke life into her, but she doesn’t respond. Instead the claxon blares, deep and ugly, warning them of something they can see for themselves. “He’s cannibalized the TARDIS.” he says in horror. “Turned her into a paradox machine, what on Kasterborous does he want to fuck with now?”

Martha, eyes locked to the glass centerpiece, catches Rose’s reflection behind her suddenly closing her eyes in a flash of pain, hand dancing to her belly for half a second before hiding her hands in her coat pocket.

Before she has a chance to say a word, though, the Doctor gives the TARDIS one last saddened glance and walks back out the doors.

“Don’t say anything to the Doctor.” Jack hisses in her ear as she walks out, “I think something’s wrong with Rose.”

“I know, I saw it too.”

“I don’t want him to panic, it’s probably nothing, but just keep an eye on her for me, ok?”

“Done.”

_-tick-_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're entering the year that never was, you all know shit's about to hit the fan  
> basically....it might be a while. because crazy long chapter.  
> just a warning.

**Author's Note:**

> more on Nyssa's making the algorithim- I started to think about who would have done it and at first I thought the Master because he would do the Space Casanova thing but I highly doubt he has the patience for math so what happened was me suddenly having this image of Tegan teasing Five for being the only "young and attractive' Doctor up to that point and daring Nyssa to do it as a joke.  
> for those of you who have never seen classic, i realize that made zero sense.  
> i apoligize.


End file.
